Why Everyone Hates Their TV And Internet Service Providers

Subscription TV and internet service providers, typically
the worst-rated industries by consumers, see customer
satisfaction ratings dip even lower this year, according to the latest American Customer
Satisfaction Index annual report on the telecommunications and
information sector.

In the report released today, customer satisfaction with subscription
television service falls 4.4% to an ACSI score of 65, and
internet service slides 3.1% to a score of 63.

ACSI conducted interviews with 12,248 customers in the U.S. in
the first quarter of 2014 and rated the biggest companies on a
scale of zero to 100 on overall customer experience, which
includes price, quality, reliability, and customer
service.

Time Warner Cable's scores sink particularly
low. Across the three
categories that include it — fixed-line telephone, internet, and
subscription television service — the telecom giant comes in dead
last. In subscription TV, it lags behind the entire
industry, and slips 7% to an all-time low of 56.

To be fair, telecom companies score poorly across the board, says
ACSI Managing Director David VanAmburg. The top-ranked
subscription TV services, DIRECTV and AT&T's U-Verse, score
well below the national average across industries of 76. In fact,
all eight companies measured saw a drop in ratings in 2014,
compared with last year, as you can see in the chart
below:

ACSI

VanAmburg says the combination
of high prices and poor reliability drives down customer
satisfaction ratings across the board. "It's a double whammy," he
says. "When you get hiccups, and [service is] slow — combined
with what customers perceive to be very high prices — that tends
to send satisfaction rates down to the
bottom."

Consumers are more satisfied
with fiber optic and satellite service due to competitive prices
and higher quality service.

The pricing and reliability issues may be compounded for Time
Warner by what customers see as poor customer service, says
VanAmburg, which may include experience with a call center, wait
times, and navigating the website.

While traditional cable companies might be at a disadvantage in
terms of aging technologies, "there's no reason why a company
can't provide good, friendly customer service, be they in the
cable industry or otherwise," VanAmburg notes.

In order to see these customer satisfaction ratings improve next
year, VanAmburg says programming, pricing, and reliability are
the big issues that need to be addressed and that improvements in
customer service would also go a long way. Another problem, he
says, may be that there's not enough competition in most markets
that customers feel they have a choice or that the big companies
feel compelled to dramatically improve their customer
service.

"In a way, they've got us," says VanAmburg. "We need that
service. If they're the only game in town, there isn't enough
competition to really put the fear into them of losing customers
unless they step up their game."